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Regeneration and the New and Old Rules of Biblical Interpretation in Relation to Evangelical Theological Seminaries By Peter Masters

Well now I'd like to, my addresses are going to be a little out of order to fit them in adequately.
So I'm going to deal now with the subject of regeneration.
We mentioned this, people have a problem with regeneration.
It's often said you cannot write an ordo salutis based upon the New Testament.
You cannot express an order of the events in salvation, but you can.
There is an order of salvation implicit throughout the whole of the Word of God.
It may not be as detailed as you would like, but as you know, there are about 200 texts in the Bible, many of which will come to mind as I say this, which are so familiar, there are about 200 texts which basically say, if you repent, I will do such and such.
That is an ordo salutis.
If you seek me, you shall find me, and I will do this and that.
An order is implicit in the great calls to men and women throughout the Bible, that you
must repent and trust the Lord, and as the result of that, something will happen.
It's inescapable.
Now if, as Professor John Murray does, you expound the regeneration texts at the expense
of those texts, you will get a wrong picture of the process of conversion.
There are two families of texts, a small family and a large family.
However, the size of the family has nothing to do with it.
We do not interpret these matters on the basis of mathematics.
We don't say, well, you've only got 36 texts saying this, and you've got 430 texts saying
that.
That point of view has it.
That would be impossible.
The Bible cannot contradict itself.
We must always interpret the one family in the light of the other family.
And yes, there is a small family of texts, and I don't say small in an emotive way, which
make it quite clear that salvation takes place because God initiates the process.
Generation, life, the planting of the seed, life from God must precede everything else.
But we dare not expound those texts at the expense of the texts which give us an order
in salvation, that if you repent and believe, then God will do something else.
So we put them together, and we learn that the process begins with an act of God.
He gives us life in the soul.
But that isn't everything.
It is everything in a sense, but it isn't everything that we experience.
Regeneration has an initial stage.
So we don't go along, I hope, with those well-intending theologians who struggle to make regeneration
everything, and repentance and faith merely as fruits or effects of regeneration almost
coincidental with conversion.
That is not an entirely fair expression of their position, but for our purposes this
morning it's reasonably fair.
Okay?
No, we have to say that traditional Calvinism sees two elements in regeneration.
Bercov, for example, puts it beautifully.
There is generation, and there is the bringing forth.
There is the invisible aspect, though it's quickly felt, and there is the visible aspect.
In other words, the whole birth picture is important.
There is a conception, there is a delivery.
There is an invisible process between the two.
There could be no delivery without a conception.
You could say conception is everything.
After all, the life comes with conception.
We don't go along with those thinkers who say that life begins at birth.
We know full well that life begins at conception.
In a sense, conception is everything.
It is pivotal.
It's the essential and the key part of everything, and essential life comes in at conception.
And if you are spiritually conceived or generated, you're a child of God, and it is inevitable
that this process is going to take place that will bring you to a consciousness of your
life in Christ, a conscious possession of the new nature, the new birth in all its manifestations.
But the whole thing is not completed with initial regeneration.
And if we don't go along with this way of looking at things, we can never adequately
preach the gospel.
This is so fundamental and important.
Dr. Hendrickson spoke perhaps a little carelessly of regeneration in its initial stages and
regeneration in its later stages.
We may not care for that terminology exactly, but you see he is expressing the truth nevertheless,
and he's reminding us that we cannot regard regeneration as encompassing everything within
an instant.
The old writers used to say, regeneration issues in conversion.
That's another way of expressing the same thing.
It's not all over in a split second.
Regeneration issues in conversion.
Having been regenerated, conversion is inevitable.
It will go through.
Life is given.
So by this way of looking at matters, we can see it begins with regeneration, but the conscious
receiving of the new life is delayed until after active repentance and faith.
So it's important to grasp this.
Even more important, there is a persuasion process.
There is something to be gone through.
Reformation opens the mind, inclines the will, makes us willing, changes our whole outlook.
We can be spiritually awakened, I'll go through the chart in a moment.
We can be convicted of sin, but we personally undergo a change of mind.
If we didn't understand the truth of the scripture, we could be forgiven for believing that we
really did it by ourselves.
Because God, this is the way God chooses to work, while He by the Holy Spirit regenerates
us, illuminates us, inclines our stubborn wills, and brings us to see the truth.
From our perspective, it just, we see these things and we are persuaded by the active
presentation of the arguments of the gospel.
And we come to the point, it's all because of the work of the Spirit, but we come to
the point where we really do choose for ourselves.
That's the effect of regeneration and we want to run to Christ and embrace Him and repent
and we have our faith in Him and then as a result of that sincere commitment, then we
receive the benefits, the felt conscious benefits of the salvation which we already have because
of regeneration.
But God wants us to put us through that stage where we are personally, intelligently convinced.
And whenever the scripture speaks of regeneration by the Word, it isn't zap, the Word just happens
to be there but playing no intelligent part, we are regenerated and our minds are made
open and willing and issuing in conversion, God using intelligently the persuasive arguments
of the Word of God.
Now they wouldn't have had a persuasive effect upon us, but for the work of the Spirit.
Not that we would not have understood them at all, we might well have understood them,
but we would have rejected them.
We see them in a new way.
The illustration I love to give is of a group of young people playing blind man's buff somewhere
near a cliff top.
And they're rushing around, the cliff top is about a hundred feet away and one has the
scarf round his head and then this lad dashes off in the direction of the cliff and of course
all his others, all the others scream out to him that he's heading for the cliff but
he thinks that they're bluffing and he takes no notice.
And he willfully runs to the cliff edge and he will take no notice of the cries.
But then another lad just about manages to catch up with him as he reaches the edge of
the cliff and he just catches on to the trailing scarf and the blindfold flies off and the
young fellow is just looking over the edge and let's say it's a thousand foot drop.
This has to be dramatic.
And he takes one look over the edge, he's been obdurate, he's been stubborn, he wouldn't
believe a thing and he wouldn't listen and he wasn't going to stop, but when he sees
that drop, what do you think?
Of his own free will, he stops.
And that is an illustration of the effect of God's regenerating work.
He so works in our hearts and minds that we actually want to stop and we grasp that this
is the only way and our salvation is here and we willingly choose Christ.
He makes us willing.
He doesn't inject an anaesthetic drug into us and when we come around the operation's
done and we discover we're Christians, we are consciously, personally persuaded, preachers,
when you preach, here is the great glory of it, you are significant, I don't want to boost
you up, but you are highly significant because the Holy Spirit chooses to use your words
and give you instrumentality and with that in mind, won't you preach all the more persuasively?
The fact that God is going to change minds by the scriptural arguments that you present,
that through the preaching of the Word, the regenerating work of God is going to be carried
on, don't go for the zap theory because there's another zed in this.
Zap makes you a meaningless zombie.
Your preaching really has no real effect, real significance.
It just somehow is the backdrop.
It must be there and God will instantaneously regenerate and nobody can understand until
He does and when He does, then the person is fully, consciously Christ's.
Friends, that's not the, that's not mainline Calvinism.
So be careful because that is penetrating our ranks on every hand.
I could have gone through the family, the families of texts, but I think that would
take a great deal of time, but you can find them for yourself.
Those that teach that God initiates conversion and those that teach that the sinner must
respond.
Now I'm sorry about the calligraphy here, it's a little bit scrappy, but can you, anyone
got a light reflection spot, can't see, or can you all see?
I'll swing it round a bit later to give you a chance.
Well we've got five boxes or balloons and the first one I've used the term conception,
but in case some of you are uncomfortable with that term and it makes you feel that
we are downgrading initial regeneration, I've put regeneration, I've done it wrongly, I
should have put under there generation, not regeneration, then it does, but just remember
that.
Generation, because really that's the scriptural term, that's the Greek.
Regeneration is a little bit cumbersome.
Regeneration is conception, the beginning of the process.
By the way, how many people here, I don't know how cooperative you are in Australia
to questions from the rostrum, some parts of the world, you can't get cooperation.
How many people here were converted inside ten minutes?
First heard the word, never thought of it at all.
Ten minutes later you were absolutely soundly the Lord's.
Anyone?
In this size of gathering there's usually one, thank you very much, there's usually
one five minute, ten minute conversion.
You don't have to worry about that, I'm not going to say you were not saved.
I haven't got a minimum time notion going on here.
There are those who are saved instantly, God prepares, illuminates the heart and brings
them through and they rather spoil my chart.
Because if I drew it that way each box would have to be on top of each other box and it
would look a bit messy.
So philosophically it's possible but it's hard to draw.
But the chart does not deny instant conversions.
By the way, this is an interesting experiment.
How many people here had their salvation all wrapped up and every, every wonderful
aspect of it completed within two months?
Still pretty low isn't it?
Within two months, two months.
What about six months?
More for six months?
Well how many of you weren't saved at all?
A year?
You're a stubborn lot of friends, you must have broken the hearts of your preachers.
No, well anyway, the main thrust of this is to point out that of course most people do
have a bit of a struggle.
And this does produce a problem because we begin to ask when were they initially regenerated?
When did God work in their hearts?
You may have come under natural convictions at first of course which would account for
your stubbornness and it might be quite late in the day after you came under the sound
of the gospel that God actually regenerated you.
So we can't look into the times.
Could it be that God could regenerate a person in January one year and they could come all
the way through to consciousness of conversion a year later?
I rather doubt it myself.
It's more likely that they came under initial impressions and human convictions of a kind
and yes the Spirit was at work but He didn't savingly illuminate them maybe until much
later in the process.
But even then it is interesting that sometimes these things take time.
So I want to explain this.
Conception first of all, the result of conception or initial regeneration is two things.
We are awakened and we are convicted.
I'd like to keep those two things together because the scripture texts variously talk
about the result being awakening and others talk about conviction.
So there are two things that happen together.
I am awakened to my spiritual need, my deadness and my need.
I am convicted of my sin.
So we'll put them together.
I'll come back on this in a moment.
The third stage, the result of being awakened and convicted is another two things.
We repent and we have faith in Christ and His atoning death.
Two quite separate things and one may be a little bit before the other but we put them
together repentance and faith, the result of box two.
The fourth stage in this ordo salutis is that we are justified in heaven and consciously
born again.
Perhaps you ought to have the consciously in.
If we just have born again we'll create confusion.
Well when are you born again?
If you think of born again as being a synonym of regeneration or conception.
So consciously born again.
You are regenerated from the beginning but you consciously receive the new life in Christ
and assurance or sealing follows.
I've used the term sealing because we can only go so far as to say initial assurance
because we do believe that assurance can be lost but initial assurance is a promise of
scripture.
It's in Ephesians, it's in 1 Corinthians, everyone who's saved has some initial assurance.
That much we know though assurance may be lost.
Sometimes it's our fault we sin.
Sometimes it's the Lord who takes away our assurance in order to train us to live by
raw faith and to lay hold on him and trust him.
Sometimes it may be linked with our temperament.
We may sadly be afflicted by some measure of depression and it may seriously undermine
our assurance so we may have to derive assurance by other means.
So we're not discussing ongoing assurance but initial assurance, the sealing of the
Spirit and the foretaste of heaven, the awareness that we're on the heavenly road and the shifting
of our sights from earth to heaven is part of this conversion process.
Now there are two of these balloons or boxes which need an asterisk put above them.
Number two and number three and the asterisk means this that these are the two stages which
may be prolonged.
Conception is an act of God and we believe from the scripture that it is instantaneous.
Initial regeneration, generation, justification is an act of God and the consciousness of
the new birth, these things are with God and those texts which tell us that if we knock
at the door, that door will be opened.
All such scriptural promises imply that there is no delay on God's side.
The delay is always on the sinner's side in salvation.
Even where God is superintending the process, the delay is on the sinner's side.
So any delay will be in stages two and three and stages four and five as stage one are
in the hands of God.
This is I believe a scriptural order salutis, order of salvation.
It is based upon the oft repeated order, repent and exercise faith and you will receive a
conscious new life and the blessing from the Lord and a sense of sonship.
That much of the order of salvation is scripturally revealed over and over again.
Now if you wish to elaborate it in this way, taking these scriptural events and fitting
them into the order, that is the only conceivable logical way of doing it.
If you doubt that, go home, preferably don't do it before question time, but if you doubt
it, go home, cut the boxes up and juggle them around all evening and you find they won't
work any other way round.
They are absurd any other way round.
I think that's a strong word, but I think you'll agree if you wish to try.
If you're good at board games and things you might enjoy that exercise, but you'll find
that you have only one conceivable order that you can arrive at.
So if we just run through it again, there is, and if friends I can adjust it, so maybe
other back and see, that's as much as I can do, isn't it?
And for Gospel preaching this is the way we must go.
God begins the process.
Now let us say that a person undergoes a slowish second box.
That can happen.
We may be awakened to our need and I think if we took, if you can remember in detail
your conversion experience, there will be some friends here, always are, but I won't
go through the motions, who will remember that they were awakened and aroused about
their spiritual need before they actually came under conviction.
It's a kind of elongation of the process.
Sometimes it's the other way round.
People come under very deep conviction but their spiritual sensitivities are slower to
wake up.
So I think we can say that even after the work of the Spirit, regenerating, illuminating,
that second box can shudder into life a little gradually.
And so through our preaching it may be that people are progressively illuminated and convicted.
Spurgeon once said that he believed, and where he got this figure from I can't imagine,
it took 18 Gospel services to crack the average sinner's nut.
So he had a very long box going there at number two for some people, but of course he may
have had in mind carnal convictions to some extent.
But he believed that many sermons don't think that everybody just fell into instant
the instant those Victorian preachers opened their mouths that they didn't.
And sometimes it was even harder because it was an age of great nominal Christianity and
self-righteousness.
You read the works of J.C.
Ryle and his evangelistic tracts, he spends more time telling people they're not Christians
than he does telling them how to become Christians.
So they had their own impediments and difficulties, but sometimes that's elongated.
Then repentance and faith.
Sometimes it takes several attempts to repent, and we know why.
We often have to counsel people about this.
They come to us and they're very earnest, and they say, well, I've tried to repent,
but nothing is happening.
I've tried to exercise faith.
And this is often a problem, and they're really under conviction.
Maybe a young man or woman who six months ago, wild horses wouldn't have dragged him
into the church.
Now his jaw is hanging open in the front row week after week, and he's aching because
he doesn't seem to be able to find salvation.
And he comes and tells you it isn't working, it isn't happening.
Now of course you don't play priest.
You don't say to him, well, tell me what you're doing wrong.
Tell me about your sin.
But in general terms, it may fall to you to help him to see that his repentance is inadequate.
Never hear people's confessions of sin.
You know what happens if you do that?
Number one, you draw off the pressure of conviction.
They've confessed to you.
They feel much better.
There's a kind of catharsis and an apprehension.
They feel relieved and much better, and you're going to delay their confession to the Lord
if you let people tell you intimate details of what they've done wrong.
But equally, they may never come again.
Having told you, they may be so embarrassed, they never want to talk to you or see you
or be in the church again.
So it's a very foolish thing to do that, though that takes us off track somewhat.
But it may fall to you to help people to see some imperfection in their repentance, just
by gently pointing out how that there are times when we really want the Lord and we
are absolutely convicted that we need forgiveness and we need new life, but at the same time
we're hoping to get into heaven and into the kingdom of God with some ambition hidden
under our coat.
Something we're not going to confess, something we're going to leave out.
Or we may be partly convicted and another part of us is making excuses for what we've
done, and so on.
And you know there, the great searcher of hearts knows when we really are in a true
state of repentance, and most seeking sinners, in my experience, have several shots at repenting
of their sin before God opens the door and gives them the conscious experience of the
blessings which have already begun to operate in their lives.
So that may be, and at the same with faith, people, you're seasoned in the faith.
Don't lose touch with your spiritual infancy.
It is possible, even after illumination, to have only partial faith, to believe that you
need the shed blood of Christ plus the fact that you're better than most other people.
The two should see you through.
And it's possible to have imperfect views of faith, even while you're just at the very
gate of heaven.
And until that faith really is entirely in Christ and His finished work and it's a matter
of nothing in my hand I bring, the door doesn't swing open.
So those two stages may be delayed, and once again it's through the preaching of the word
that people are encouraged to understand the true nature of repentance and faith.
And then, immediately, they are consciously born again and assured.
But simple as this diagram is, it helps us in our evangelistic work.
Helps us in our counseling, helps us to understand what's going on, helps us to see the absolute
necessity of the sinner being convinced by the word and educated by the word as to what
he must do.
If we lose these concepts, we cannot offer the gospel.
That's why I labor the point and believe that it's so important that we should go through
these things.
I could go in greater detail through some of the hindrances to repentance at this point,
if it would help you.
A person may not repent because they have too superficial a view of sin.
A person may not repent because their repentance is too general, too vague, because Christians
get into that habit, don't we also?
Sometimes we leave off self-examination and our repentance can be so vague, oh Lord, forgive
me all my sins, and we haven't confessed one of them.
And we haven't a long time sometimes since we stopped, even for a few minutes, to review
the deeds of the day.
And why do we get like that, ill-discipline?
But also there's another reason.
You practice even five minutes self-examination per day and it hurts, because shame is pain.
I know they don't rhyme, but they almost do.
Shame is pain.
And so self-examination is not very popular, because we don't want people to be introspective
and utterly depressed.
We don't want people to attempt to self-examine and identify all their sins.
Well, it would take you best part of a day to do that, but we must have some self-review
and some shame.
And the seeking sinner often is not seriously repenting, and he needs advice to bring before
the Lord, with shame, the broad areas of his life and his sin and his deed.
Sometimes the seeking sinner has only an external view of sin.
Some preachers encourage this.
I am not anti-American in this comment, believe me.
But I do notice, traveling about the USA, you tune into the radio preachers and their
sin band seems to be limited to smoking, drinking, adultery, and that's about it.
The only sins in the book.
And heart sins never get a mention, selfishness and pride and all the others, you know, and
greed and so on.
So sometimes the seeking sinner is very ill-instructed and he is conscious of his sin, really, but
the only sins that are identified in his mind are the external ones.
And often it is the will of God to bring him into a greater awareness of the heart sins,
the deep attitudes of sin that are in us constantly and underlie the acts.
So sometimes they need more help to see their sin.
Some people repent only of one or two sins.
Some people repent of their sins and continue to be proud of their good points.
Even a convicted seeking sinner will tell you what a wretched man he is and in his next
breath say, ah, but I'm one of those people when I lose my temper I recover very quickly.
Ah, I'm one of those people who will do good to anybody.
Even the convicted sinner is still hanging on to a range of good points and you have
to tell them you can't, God will not bless you, God will not hear that.
God doesn't want to hear your words repenting of your sin, but there's a voice coming out
of your inside shouting over the top, ah, but I'm not as bad as that.
So these pictures have to be given to people and of course some preachers make life difficult
for us because they go on the radio and they teach the people that the only sin that matters
is rejection of Christ.
I hope nobody's embroiled in that.
There's only one sin you'll ever be judged for, they say, only one sin that matters,
the rejection of Christ.
To get to that point you have to tear all the judgement texts out of the word of God
because we're judged for everything, not just rejection of Christ.
Oh I don't mind if you make it the chief sin but it certainly isn't the only sin and otherwise
of course multitudes of people could never be judged at all.
But ah, and hindrances to faith we've already mentioned.
But that is the scheme of salvation which will enable you to keep tight hold of your
offer of the Gospel.
I begin with that text we read, 1 Corinthians 9 16, for though I preach the Gospel I have
nothing to glory of, for necessity is laid upon me, yea, woe is unto me if I preach not
the Gospel.
Now I'm going immediately to Mark chapter 1 and I'm going to go very quickly through
these and if you'd like to turn to these scriptures with me, I have arranged them in Bible order
so it won't be a nuisance to you to turn to them.
So Mark chapter 1 and verses 14 to 15.
The purpose of this will be to show you that the term Gospel is always defined within the
passage in which it is used.
There is no debate, no argument about this.
I have I hope in the most friendly way many, many times tried to persuade preachers who
believe that Gospel is a synonym for all the counsel of God and therefore there is no necessity
for regular or specific Gospel preaching.
I've many times challenged me to find a text in which the word Gospel could be construed
in any other way but as referring to the soul saving doctrines.
And so far no one has ever come up with any solution to this.
So if you just look at some of the many verses we could turn to.
Mark 1 verse 14, now after that John was put in prison, Jesus came into Galilee preaching
the Gospel of the kingdom of God and saying the time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God
is at hand, repent ye and believe the Gospel.
So the Gospel is self-defined here as that which must be believed at the time of repentance
in order to secure the blessing of God and come back to him.
It is basic fundamental truth.
The Gospel is the news of the coming of the Messiah and what he will do, his redemptive
work.
It's that which encompasses and includes repentance.
I don't think anybody would argue with that.
It is in this particular reference crystal clear it is self-defined.
It cannot be stretched to mean other Christian truths.
Now we could turn to so many texts, they're all of the same ilk.
Look at Mark 16, and I'm sorry to take you through this in a way, but I hope you'll find
it very beneficial even though it all adds up to one big point.
Mark 16 and verse 15, and he said unto them, go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel
to every creature.
Do you believe seriously that the Great Commission would have you go into all the world and tell
every creature the five points of Calvinism?
What we are to preach in the Gospel is something which would be suitable for every creature.
The smallest child who is capable of understanding, the wildest pagan.
This is those doctrines which are suitable and appropriate to the spiritual needs of
every creature.
It's self-defined, isn't it?
It's inconceivable you could look at the word in any other way.
It emerges increasingly as a very specific term with a technical meaning, and it's never
varied in the Scripture, in the usage of the Lord Jesus Christ or anywhere else.
Look Chapter 4 and verse 18, and I think I'll only have to read a few of these because
I'm sure the point will be absorbed by everyone.
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he hath anointed me to preach the Gospel to
the poor.
And of course it is the spiritually poor.
He hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, those
in spiritual bondage and recovering of sight to the blind.
The Lord is using the language of, the figurative language, the language of the parable to set
at liberty them that are bruised to preach the acceptable year of the Lord.
Gospel there is defined as that message which is suitable to the spiritually broken and
bruised and lost and blind.
It is something which is tailor-made for the unregenerate and the wayward and the wandering.
It's self-defined.
It is not possible to employ it as a synonym for all truths.
And in Luke Chapter 9 and verse 6, we find it again, and they departed and went through
the towns preaching the Gospel and healing everywhere.
The whole point is that they're announcing the coming of the Lord and preaching as Christ
did that Gospel of repentance.
So you have Gospel self-defined by the context.
They're announcing the Messiah.
Again, perhaps you'd like to glance on at Acts 8, a slightly different character of
usage and verse 25.
And it's good to look at these.
And they, when they had testified and preached the word of the Lord, returned to Jerusalem
and preached the Gospel in many villages of the Samaritans.
Well, who were the Samaritans?
The Samaritans, as you know, believed a travesty of the Old Testament word and the truth of
God.
They were not people living close to the Lord with clear views of scriptural grace.
They were outsiders.
They were off the track to preach Messiah to them and what he had come to do and his
promises.
Only the most basic truths would be appropriate and suitable for preaching to the Samaritans
and Gospel there is self-defined as the basic essentials.
And we could go on to perhaps Acts 14 and verse 7.
And it's in the light of this we need to work.
And there they preached the Gospel and the context is the Apostle Paul and the work of
preaching to unbelievers, to outsiders.
In chapter 15, it's defined.
I'll just turn over to Romans 1, 16, and we won't have to spend too much time with this,
but just to show you how numerous these self-defining texts are.
Romans chapter 1 and verse 16, for I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ, for it is
the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth.
Isn't that self-defined?
The Gospel is that message which has saving power to those who believe it.
It's soul-saving essentials.
The term is a technical restricted term defined in every verse that it is employed and used.
The context itself informs the verse and informs on the meaning, and it's as plain as that.
And Romans 10.
And in the light of all this, we'll come back to 1 Corinthians.
Romans 10 and verse 13, for whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.
How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed?
And how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard?
And how shall they hear without a preacher?
And then down there in verse 15, those that preach the Gospel of peace and bring glad
tidings of good things.
The Gospel is self-defined.
It's the initial teachings, the salvation teachings of the Word which are able to bring
people under conviction and to trust and faith in Jesus Christ.
It isn't anything else.
It's those soul-saving fundamentals.
That is the Gospel.
Oh, friends, we cannot say, whenever I preach, I preach the Gospel.
I'm instructing the saints, but I regard it as preaching the Gospel.
It isn't.
It's the gateway truths that constitute what is described as the good news or the Gospel
in the Word of God.
And nobody would have denied that 45 years ago.
This is a new fad, this shifting of the meaning of the Word, and we really must understand
that.
There are so many texts I could take you to.
We could work through 1 Corinthians 3-2 and 1 Corinthians 4-15 and 1 Corinthians 9-14
and on and on.
In fact, you go through Galatians and you find it mentioned always in connection with
salvation and other epistles also.
In fact, it's used 12 times this term in the letter to the Galatians, always in a salvation
context, never in any other context.
Nine times in the letter to the Ephesians, always in connection with salvation.
And so you could go all the way through the Word of God.
It's a most powerful term, and I cannot offer you any alternative definition.
Then you look at 1 Timothy chapter 1, and in the light of all this, see the force of
this verse.
1 Timothy chapter 1 and verse 11, according to the glorious Gospel of the blessed God
which was committed to my trust.
As preachers called to represent him, as Christians called to witness, but particularly here as
a preacher, we read that God has entrusted us with the proclamation of the initial soul-saving
doctrines of the Bible.
And friends, if we have only preached evangelistically once, twice, three times a year, I don't want
to create any hostility, I want to win everybody to this point of view.
So forgive me, I have to say this, we simply have not honored our trust.
God has given us a trust, and we haven't honored it.
We've missed out on this.
We've got to do that, friends.
Once you establish that Gospel always means the proclamation of saving doctrines, such
as can bring people under conviction and awaken their souls, you must do that because
it is committed to your trust.
It's essential.
That's why I believe you should preach the Gospel every week.
Can I take a verse out of context?
In Ephesians, we read of pastors, teachers, evangelists, and it isn't the right use of
the text, of the verse, but there are three aspects to ministry.
We've got to deal with people's hearts, pastoring the flock, applying the Word, we've got to
teach them the doctrines, and we've got to evangelize sinners.
It's a nice little way of looking at three aspects of ministry.
We've got three aspects of ministry.
If you want to be a very logical person, though it isn't essential, you've got three services
every week.
Sunday morning, Sunday evening, weeknight sermon, weeknight Bible teaching.
You can cover all three.
You can do justice to each.
Of course, it may not be you do it exactly like that.
It may be that your pastoral application and your teaching run side by side.
Two services for that, one service for the Gospel.
Don't try to solve the problem by putting in a word for the unsaved here and there.
By all means, do that, but you know it isn't very efficient.
It isn't very effective.
Your very Calvinism should warn you about that.
It really doesn't make a lot of sense.
Most all around the world who believe that people are blinded and only a work of the
Spirit can illuminate and regenerate seriously expect unconverted sinners to sit through
45 minutes of expository preaching to the saints waiting for that little word every
now and then, which is going to be tangible to them.
It doesn't make any sense.
If you're a Calvinist and you believe in the intellectual difficulty involved here in spiritual
communication you will be a believer in specific, tailored, dedicated, evangelistic preaching.
And of course it is effective.
The flock soon, of course there's a bit of cart and horse in this, you say, yes, but
if I did that every week I can account for all my people.
I've only got saved people in my congregation.
Well two points, you don't know that of course.
You could never be certain of that.
That's a piece of real presumption.
I know that when I moved to the Tabernacle 25 years ago and we had a band of faithful
elderly ladies and they all seemed to be saved, but one of the remarkable things to me was
that over the next five years a number of them professed faith in Christ and they'd
been church members for 50 years.
You never know, friends, it's only when you start preaching the Gospel you discover how
much blessing some people need.
But you see, you've got to start.
It's no good saying I can account for all my people.
The reason for that is that you're not preaching the Gospel.
If you start to preach the Gospel and the hearts of the believers thaw and they warm
to this exercise and they begin to pray for this activity and witness and bring the people
in, in six months you'll have a lot of people you can't account for.
You'll have the church working as a unit identifying with this instead of people saying I wish
I could bring my neighbor to church but you never know what the subject's going to be.
It may be on predestination and they wouldn't understand that.
It may be on some finer point of doctrine or it may be completely remote from them and
irrelevant to them.
You hear these complaints from people constantly.
People say to them, I wish we had a Gospel service at home.
In my church you never know what the subject's going to be.
But if you have a Gospel service, doesn't matter, it's local wisdom will determine when
you have it, whether you have it in the morning, whether you have it in the evening, whether
you switch it about and make clear announcements, that's all local wisdom.
But if you have it, the ground will be watered by prayer, there'll be a heightened expectation
on the part of the people, people will cooperate with you, maybe not at first.
If the Gospel hasn't been regularly preached in a church for 10, 15, 20, 25 years, you
can't expect everybody to jump on board overnight.
It may take you a few months before people really understand what this is about and their
hearts are with you.
The young will understand overnight usually, but the older and the wiser are usually a
little slower in changing their views.
And the older and the wiser, the slower as a rule, so not always.
However, the sooner or later, God will bless and you will find people are brought in.
We at the Tabernacle are obliged to keep our Gospel service in the evening because we've
had for many years the opportunity to advertise it on the London Underground, so of course
we have to work to a fixed time, which is announced in these different means, but certainly
local wisdom decides how you do things as long as we do them, and that is so vital and
so important.
But now just go back to that 1 Corinthians 9 verse 16.
Once you look through, take a concordance, examine every text which contains the word
Gospel, convince yourself what Gospel really means, and then you read this 16th verse,
and it is, as I said before, a thunderclap.
The second part, necessity is laid upon me, yea woe is unto me if I preach not the Gospel.
There's no way out.
Once you define that word, woe is unto me.
Friends, once God gives us light on this, we've got to do it.
We've got to do it constantly, regularly.
That means we've got to learn to do it.
That means we've got to learn how to exploit all the Gospel potential of every book of
the Bible.
We can't afford to run out of matter.
We've got to learn how to appeal to every condition of unbelief, simply and directly,
with so many persuasions and arguments.
Our eyes have got to be opened to how to use them, how to work them.
Well we remember this in the past.
I've already referred to past preachers in the heady days of Calvinism, when we had all
the great evangelists and the Whitfields and so many others, all the way down to Spurgeon
and afterwards.
In the last century, say in 1890, in central London, you could step into any one of hundreds
of churches, and you would have heard an evening Gospel sermon.
Oh, it was wonderful, friends.
The buildings, churches, the Anglicans, the Baptists, the Methodists, all of them preaching
the Gospel on every street corner.
And they were full.
And everywhere you would find Gospel ministry going on, disappeared now, have to travel
far and wide.
You could visit evangelical churches, Reformed churches.
So seldom will you hear evangelistic ministry.
We've got to turn back that tide.
We really have.
And you know, if you do that in this region, I mustn't speak too confidently in this vein
because many of you already will be preaching the Gospel, I'm sure.
But if a number of preachers turn back the clock and began regular Gospel ministry, and
your work was attested by God with signs following, if you like, of the right kind, with many
conversions, what an impact you'd make on churches far and wide in this country to bring
back into fashion the glorious preaching of the fundamental doctrines of salvation in
many a pulpit, exploiting all the methods of the Scripture, and some of them we'll look
at.
Don't be ensnared by hyper-Calvinism.
Even quasi-hyper-Calvinism.
Even a few grains of it, enough to kill the offer of the Gospel and remonstrating persuasive
Gospel preaching.
Don't be affected by it in the least.
It is always a disaster.
In the history of the Church of Jesus Christ, it is always deadening, always killing.
It is always associated with periods of decline.
What do you think spoiled, do you study Church history?
What do you think spoiled the Puritan era?
It was this.
It was the beginning of hyper-Calvinism, Arianism, deadening influences, presumption on every
hand.
The glories of the Puritan era were run into the ground.
When you think of the Puritans, remember this, that period came to an end.
What brought it to an end?
The very doctrine which gets in among us now, which kills Gospel preaching.
What about that period, if I dare say this, in largely Reformed and Presbyterian circles,
what brought to a close the golden age of Baptist Church expansion in the 17th century?
Tremendous age when believers so mushroomed in independency also and Baptist circles.
But that golden age came to an end.
You know well how it came to an end because you know all about the period of hyper-Calvinism
which was only broken through Gospel instruments like Andrew Fuller for all his faults and
others.
Of course, Jonathan Edwards greatly influenced them and they came back to the Gospel offer
and that touched off Carey and the modern missionary movement.
The down influences are always this, even this grain of hyper-Calvinism and the up influences
are always the rediscovery of the Gospel and the Gospel offer.
Now that is a crude oversimplification of things but it is true.
In our land today, those who are affected, even tainted by hyper-Calvinism cannot see
souls won and their churches shrink and shrink and shrink.
You know to move away from regular Gospel preaching and the offer, the persuasive offer
of the Gospel is not only spiritual folly, it's intellectual folly.
You've only got to lift up your eyes and look around and see what a disaster this point
of view is.
Friends, if you hold to it, I don't want to alienate you, I want to be as persuasive as
I can to get you to look over the top of it and see what it's doing.
That's not scriptural and it isn't wise and it's deadening and destructive so we must
come back to the regular preaching of the Word of God.
Now I'm 12 o'clock finish or this is tantalizing so we should go to question time and we'll
postpone into the afternoon a little treatment of the nature of persuasion and go right into
hermeneutics and examples.
I should think there'd be time so I'll yield to the clock and draw to an end for the moment.